1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer system and software method for organizing and managing information and, more particularly, to a system that layers non-hierarchical HTML search and indexing on top of an existing Windows® file system.
2. Description of the Background
File systems have been hierarchical since early software in order to provide the ability to organize data. Of course, this requires identification using a file path, e.g., C:/users/rwcraig/stuff/notes/caldndar/telephone.txt to uniquely identify any file, directory or other named resource. Modern high-end computing (HEC) systems must manage petabytes and exabytes of data stored in billions of files, and hierarchical file systems are cumbersome. Foldering is the process of grouping documents. A folder hierarchy can be used as a classification method to categorize documents, helping to narrow a search space for documents and providing a natural method of navigating documents. Examples of providing the folder hierarchy can be found in file systems such as, for example, the NTFS on Windows platforms, or in an email repository such as, for example, Lotus Notes®. Conventional foldering mechanisms require a user to manually maintain the placement of documents in a folder within a folder hierarchy. When the content of a document is changed, users have to determine a location for the document within the folder hierarchy that matches the new content of the document. The possibility of misplacing documents in a folder hierarchy is relatively high. Once the document is misplaced, it can be difficult to locate. It is cumbersome to place/assign billions of files in their rightful individual folders.
Auto foldering systems address the issues of manual foldering. Conventional auto foldering systems automatically place the documents in folders using a predefined criterion based on the properties or content of the document. However, if changes in the content of such a document occur frequently the processing overhead involved in reevaluating the foldering criteria and placing the document in appropriate folders is too much. Different programs use different naming conventions and save files to their own directory, which can make it difficult for users to find their way back to the files. Programs often have default directories and places they save documents. A user often has to search through their hard disk and make guesses about where a file is stored. Related items are also often stored in separate places. Related files that a user has may be stored on different parts of the hard disk, etc. This problem becomes more common with the developments of digital media services that have multiple content types (e.g., pictures, music, video).
This is especially true on a network where files are distributed and it is very difficult for users to find or return to files. Users typically have to memorize or map the various sites and names that they need for finding files on a network. Moreover, “networks” include the internet where multiple users maybe collaborating on multiple documents scattered across a cloud-based environment. Linking web-based collections of documents in a useful manner is impossible. What is needed is a non-hierarchical file system.
In document databases and electronic filing systems there is provided an area in which keywords or attributes can be written in documents. By using the keywords or attributes, it is possible to retrieve documents and to pick up only desired documents by using retrieval query. This is characteristic of web pages, where linking is done by providing metadata links on each web page to other web pages or documents. A user may click on one of the links appearing on the web page in a browser to navigate to the other web page or document. The creation of the links on each web page may be performed by a web author or designer by inserting a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for each link appearing on the web page. However, creating and designing a web page by typing in URLs is typically tedious, error prone and very time consuming. In addition, updating links that are scattered across several interconnected web pages can be a real chore.
What is needed is a computer system and software method for streamlined data management that packages data in the inherent folder hierarchy of the operating system, eliminating the need to create a dedicated folder hierarchy outside of what is inherently provided by the operating system, yet also layers there atop a data management system that employs metadata links on each document for filtering and organizing items based on common elements